With heat racing through her body, she pulled away. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he said, his voice sounding with a hallowed quality. “Can I hold your hand?”
Beth slid her fingers down his arm and into his hand, the only answer she could currently give. In the silence that descended on them, Beth heard her own heartbeat in her ears and not much else.
Her thoughts raced and then slowed as she accepted that she was holding hands with another man besides Danny Dixon.
“I was engaged once,” Trey said. “Did you know?”
Beth cleared her throat. “No, I didn’t.”
Trey nodded, his gaze out on the pasture like it was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. “Her name was Sarah Samuels.”
“How’d you meet her?”
“She worked in the marketing department at the printer we use,” he said. “They make all our signs, fliers, even those little name tags we give to our champion horses. The ones made of gold?” He chuckled. “It’s pretty ridiculous what we do for those horses.”
Beth liked the sound of his voice, and she didn’t want to taint the conversation with hers.
“Anyway.” Trey leaned further into the railing. “She worked with Cayden a lot, because he does almost all of the PR for the ranch, and I met her once…and it was like…I don’t know. Magic.”
“Sounds wonderful,” Beth said, her mind wandering down paths she didn’t normally allow it to. “I was married once, but I think you knew that.”
His fingers tightened on hers. “I did know that.” He glanced at her and grinned. “How did you meet Danny?”
“Everyone in Dreamsville knows the Dixons,” she said, a smile automatically curling her mouth. “Danny was my best friend’s older brother. I’d seen him around their ranch from time to time, but he was gone to college before I really started hanging out with Myra.”
“You must’ve caught his eye when he came home on a break.”
“Not really,” she said. “I grew up and went to college with Myra. I didn’t finish and came back. I started dating other men.” She lifted one shoulder. “None of them were Danny. I didn’t realize it until I went to Myra’s college graduation party, and there he was. I guess you could say that was when we met.”
Beth lost herself in good memories of Danny before he’d become her husband. He’d graduated from college too, but his engineering degree only got used for a couple of years before he realized how much he hated it. They’d gotten married and bought this beat-up farm on the outskirts of town, next to the wildly successful Bluegrass Ranch.
How hard they’d worked. Sixteen hours, from sunup to sundown. They’d built a lot of the structures on the farm from the foundation up, and Danny had built this porch where she and Trey now stood.
“You must have loved him very much,” Trey said.
“I did,” Beth said, pulling herself from her sadness. She drew in a deep breath, held it, and watched her brother turn off the highway. “That’s Hugh.”
Trey released her hand and put another two feet of distance between them. Beth felt the loss of his touch keenly, and she looked him. “They’re going to find out, like you said.”
“We have five weeks to get married,” he said. “I think we should probably go on at least one date before then.” He kept his eyes on her brother’s huge black truck as it came closer. “What do you think?”
“Yes,” she said, her lungs quaking a little bit.
“That’s my stipulation,” he said. “I should at least be able to tell my family that we’re dating before I start packing my bags to move out.”
Beth swallowed. “You’ll move in here?”
“You have enough bedrooms,” he said. “Might as well make it look real on the outside, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” she said again. Hugh parked beside Trey, and Beth’s window to have this conversation was running out.
“What’s your stipulation?” he asked. “I suppose you can have more than one.”
“I just have one,” she said, her throat so very dry.
“What is it?”